


the sky is grand and wide

by terriku



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-02 03:04:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17879885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terriku/pseuds/terriku
Summary: I succeeded where my father had not. When my husband left me, I stood alone as the Khan and even my Tenrik blood could not keep the peace. Oh, we did not fall into war, not right away. War did not come until my husband returned.





	1. Chapter 1

It is known in grasslands I once called home that peace is a fraught and temporary thing, and yet for fourteen generations my clan held the grasslands together as one. For this reason, we alone among the twelve clans had no animal totem. There are the Oroniri who were as loyal as wolves, and the falcon-eyed Sahmbakhal who rule the delta-lands, and the Iketteru who were as fierce as boars. But we were the Tenrik and we were eagle-hunters and warriors and craftsmen and rulers; we were the grand sky as wide and all-encompassing as the horizons. So, it was said among our people and among others that so long as a Tenrik sat in the Stone City the twelve tribes were as one kingdom.

What was unsaid was this: if there was no Tenrik, then the twelve tribes were twelve separate tribes each ready to rip the other’s throats out. Without our banner and without our Khan, the grasslands would burn and the people would bleed. To be a Tenrik Khan was to hold the peace in your own body and blood. To be a Tenrik Khan was to be warrior and ruler both. Warrior before all other warriors, and lord before all other lords. They are animals; we are the sky. High and unreachable. Unyielding and untouchable. These are the words my father passed to me and I remembered them well, though perhaps I did not understand them as well as I should have. But then, I was only a second-child, and a daughter at that. If I had been born a son, perhaps nothing would have ever changed and my clan would have kept the peace for generations to come.

Or perhaps, our line had lost the reins of peace. War had not come under any Tenrik Khan before me, but my father almost brought war to the twelve tribes twice.

The first was when he took my mother. She was daughter of one Ikessal lord, and sister to another. And though she was betrothed to my father, her own brother loved and coveted her as no brother should. This I have heard from the mouths of many. My father killed two Ikessal lords to bring her to his home and the Ikessal never forgot that. For no matter the sins and dishonors they had committed, both Ikansar and Behet had been their lords, born from a bloodline almost as old as my own. It would have come to war then, I think, had not Ikansar’s cousin taken the lordship himself and opened his hand in peace. _Enough_ , he said, _for we will be family now. Look at my sister and how she swells with Tenrik blood; that child will be a child of our lines both_. I do not think the Ikessal forgot that dishonor either. But they sheathed their swords and bit their tongues. They swallowed this dishonor, and they sat down once again at our table because their lord had asked it of them. Lowlanders can never understand this – the loyalty which binds a clan to their lord. It is more than blood and more than family. It is more than love; whatever love is in the mind of lowlanders. I suspect it is far and away from the love that we of the grasslands know.

Did my mother love my father? I do not know. Surely my father loved her most dearly for after she birthed my brother, she lay in a feverbed for almost half a year, and after that, so scared by her frail health, my father never lay with her again. She was truly the moon to his sun and her loss was unbearable to him in the way that nothing else was. This too, I have heard from the mouths of many.

The second time my father almost brought war was when my mother died. Or perhaps I should say, it was when I was born. For I entered this world as my mother left it and this, I know, my father never forgave me for. I should have never been born. But a Khan with a single child is a scary thing in our land, especially one with no sisters or brothers and no nephews or nieces. For eight years my father held out for love of my mother. But between the eighth and the ninth, something changed. I have heard said that my father’s love for the country won out, or that the lords had forced his hand by offering other wives, and even that my mother had taken it upon herself to bear another Tenrik heir. It does not matter. That summer, I was born and my mother died. My father never remarried after that, though as Khan he should have, and he insulted no small number of lords and clans by turning down their daughters. So high does the Tenrik soar! Does the Khan forget that he, khan of khans, lord above all lords, is still only a man? That his son, his only son, is a man too? One who might fall in battle with the lowlanders, who might take sick like his Ikessal mother, who might die on the tusk of a wild boar? One ilkhan bodes ill for our lands, give us another.

They meant remarriage of course. But my father was Tenrik Khan and his pride was as high as the skies and his love for my mother, as deep as the rivers. He did not go back on his decisions and he had decided never to remarry and never to love another again. To these lords, my father offered me.

 _Look,_ he said, _and do not see a girl-child. She is a child of my blood, a child of the royal Tenrik line and she will be ilkhan._

If the lords of then could look into the future and see where we are today, perhaps they would have told my father that this was foolishness. Perhaps they would have put a stop to it and I would be no more than a khan’s daughter. But they did not. My father said he would make an ilkhan of me. And because he was Tenrik Khan, warrior before all warriors, lord before all lords, a true sun in the sky, they believed him. If Tenrik Khan said he could make an ilkhan out of a girl child, then he would.

As soon as I turned five, I was trained with the rest of our clansmen. They were boys then, as I was a girl-child. With them, I learned to ride and shoot and fight. I learned to weave rope and lash horses and how to sing the eagle songs. The warriors raised me, and I was theirs in a way I was not my father’s. Up until the age of fourteen, my father seemed to forget he had once had a daughter, a little princess that could have been the flower of her people. But I had been an ilkhan for so long, more often covered in the muck of horses than any rogue or powder, I no longer thought of myself as a girl-child. Girl-children learned to sew and bake. Girl-children from noble lines learned to play the zither or the two-stringed morin khuur. They were flowers, beloved and doted on, kept safe within their father’s walls.

What was I? I was an ilkhan of the Tenrik, a child of the Khan and a direct descendent of Temujin Khan, who himself had been fathered by Akteru, dragonlord of the heavens. I was a blade in my father’s hand, as I would be in my brother’s when he became Khan. I would go where the Khan could not – to the borders and beyond. That is what I was. That is what I would become.

And yet, in the year of my fourteenth birthday, my brother rode out to the riverlands to fetch me back to the Stone City.

“Come,” he had said to me, “father is calling you home.”

And because my father had never missed me once and never once called me back from the frontiers, I asked: “What does father want?”

My brother, who loved me as a father would have, who loved me dearer than anything or anyone else, looked me in the eyes and answered honestly. I remember the way his hands tightened on the reins, and I remember how I did not understand then that this meant bad tidings.

“You are to be betrothed to Prince Yeshin.”


	2. Chapter 2

Begter of the Ikessal would have lived as just a normal clan member if only my father had not killed two Ikessal lords in one year. He was Ikansar’s cousin, a distant uncle of my mother, and by all accounts an Ikessal with no sharp edges. My father did not believe this, of course. He would say there are no Ikessal without sharp edges. They are all hiding daggers between their honeyed tongues, and they are all vipers in the grass waiting for the moment to strike. Still, he agreed to give his daughter to the Ikessal heir. And it was all the more momentous for I was no simple princess – I was ilkhan. Should my brother die without heir, it was I who would sit in the Stone City and rule as the Khan. 

Looking back, I can see this was my father’s own concession to the depth of his mistakes. My brother was almost twenty and two, and still, the Ikessal did not forget. My brother, who spent summers with the Ikessal in their valley, and whom Begter loved as a son, was not enough to soothe their anger. They looked to the Tenrik Khan and they remembered the Ikessal that lay dead at his feet, that the Tenrik Khan had raised his hand against one of the twelve tribes. Worse still, they told others. They did not trumpet it from their valley peaks, but instead, in the flickering shadows of a fire, or at the end of a meal, they would tell this story over and over until it took hold in the minds of all that ate at their table.

So, my father agreed to send me to the Ikessal. A daughter to be given for a daughter once taken. A fair trade in the eyes of some, and an unfair one in the eyes of many.

Let me say this of the Ikessal: they are called Eagles for their lofty pride, which Gansukh had called haughty once, and they had much to be proud for. Their lords had a lineage almost as old as our’s and their bloodlands included the rich and fertile Illnar valley which produced enough rice to clothe the Ikessal in lowlander silk. They were warriors, but scholars too, and they traded more than just rice and stones with the lowlanders. So, when they came to The Stone City, they came dressed in all their finery. Begter wore a lord’s deel brocaded with indigo thread. He was already seated on the right in the place of the guest, and behind him were his six riders. Besides him was his son.

That is how I first saw Yeshin, and that is how, in some ways, he remained in my mind’s eye for the longest time. A boy on the cusp of manhood, in his red deel with its golden threads and black ermine. He was looking at my father, and even from behind a sandalwood panel I could see the silver scar that curved under his jaw.

Had I come of age and completed my warrior’s rights, I too could have walked in and sat at my father’s left. But I was still only fourteen, not yet a full warrior, so as my brother walked in and made his greetings and sat at my father’s right, I waited to be called in. 

I had not felt it before but seeing the way the sun caught on Yeshin’s deel, and the way he sat so still and straight I felt for the first time aware that I was not a beautiful thing. My hair was not long and silky and I tried to futilely to paw it into something presentable. But it was short and windthrown – I had lost my warrior’s braid a month ago and even if Olkhyn had tried to be kind when cutting it, it was still growing back choppy. My deel was simple, cotton and wool dyed the Tenrik blue. Suited to riding and roughhousing, and not very much at all to meeting one’s future husband. Even my sash which was the royal golden-orange and embroidered with lines and lines of charms by sure-fingered Teka failed to look fine in the face of the Ikessal riches. If Tor had not placed a hand on my shoulder, I would have gone into the hall and faced the Ikessal as a girl-child, one who knew she was lacking.

But Tor was behind me and so was Gansukh and they reminded me that I was ilkhan. When Hoegun nodded her head to tell me they were ready, I entered with my chin held high and my back straight and I looked only at my father, my khan, my lord, and I bowed and made the greeting for both my clan head and my khan. I did not look behind me to know that Tor and Gansukh had done the same, and I did not look to my right to see the Ikessal stare at me and find me wanting.

I sat my father’s left and stared straight until spoken to. Tor and Gansukh took their places in the left, with the rest of our clansmen. They would not be my riders until I had taken my warrior’s rights, but I was glad they had already taken their’s. For if they had not, they would not have been allowed into the hall at all and I would have been alone.

In any other betrothal, I should have knelt in front of my father and bowed when my betrothed’s father spoke. But I was ilkhan, and so it was Begter who had to stand and bow. He stood and spoke at length about his line and of his wife, and then he called for the arak.

“Tenrik Khan,” he said as his first rider poured the milky liquor, “my son is young and barely a warrior, he is unwheted and unnamed. But he is an eagle, and we eagles must find skies under which to fly.”

This was not a question, but it was an asking. Begter drank the arak and he held the cup as it was refilled. And then he offered it to my father by stepping up onto the dais. My father took it from his hands with one hand and said:

“Begter of the Ikessal, you will find that the sky of the Tenrik is grand and wide. Let your son spread his wings beneath it.”

My father did not stand, but he drank the arak in one breath and held out the cup first to the left, and then to the right, to show that it was empty and not a drop remained.

And there it was. The answer to the asking. Begter smiled and in that smile, I could see my brother. They shared the same eyes. Eyes which never changed too much in shape or revealed much save to those who could read their warmth. He stepped back and summoned his son. 

Yeshin rose and he was of a height with Gansukh, such that when he stood in front of me, I would have to raise my head to see his face. He was of an-age with Gansukh too, I thought, sixteen, seventeen, old enough to have received his warrior’s rights. He had the Ikessal eyes too, like his father and my brother, but there was no honey-warmth in them.

“I am Yeshin, son of Begter of the Ikessal, son of Yenhua of the Rouran.”

He said no more but he drank the arak in one go, and when he was done, he held the cup as it was refilled and then he offered it to me.

“I am Tehknaltyr, second-ilkhan of the Tenrik, daughter of the Khan, sister to the first-ilkhan.”

I did not say that at the nadaam, our relay team had run the farthest and the fastest, that we had brought back more foxes in the hunt than even the sharp-eyed Sahmbakhal. I did not say my master was the Lion of Twenty Summers, or that the colt which was now my war-horse had been judged best of the nadaam by the horse-mothers. Yeshin had not said anything else of himself, so I did not either. I did not mention my mother either, an omission more glaring in hindsight, for I had learned long ago not to mention her where my father could hear.

I was fourteen. I had drunken arak before, as all boys have: stolen from their mentor’s bottles for curiosity. I had shared it, watered-down with Gansukh and Tor when we’d gone to the northern frontier where it was winter all year around where the only warmth was found huddled between the bodies of your friends. I knew arak to be strong and fiery, the kind of liquor that settled in your belly like a pool of fire.

This arak was so fine and fragrant. It burned clear down my throat and it did not settle in my belly. I would drink it three more times from Yeshin’s hand, and the fourth time would be at our wedding.

When I was done, I stood up and I held the cup up, first to the right so the Ikessal could see I had accepted their bounty. Then to the left, so my clansmen could see I had left not a drop. I returned the cup to Yeshin and he stared at me as if expecting me to fall over. I waited for him to return to his father’s side, but he stood there in front of me for the longest time and I could not understand why. Finally, he reached into his deel and pulled out a beautiful hairpin. It was a milk-white jade and beautifully carved and clear. When he held it out to me, I understood his hesitation.

This was his bridegift, the first one I would receive and I could not wear it. My hair was too short and too choppy and there would be no long elegant buns or braids for this pin to hold up. Since there was no hair for him to tuck it into, I took the pin from his hand and placed it within my sleeve.

In addition to the traditional tea, milk, and sugar, Begter gave my father three rolls of beautiful silk, each embroidered with flowers and phoenixes, two silver carafes and a set of painted scrolls from the lowlands. Yeshin’s gift went forgotten in the midst of these treasures, and I felt a shiver of apprehension. If these were Begter’s first betrothal gifts, what would he give in the second, the third? Was my value truly that high? Even a daughter of a khan could not expect silver on the first exchange.

The same unrest ran through my clansmen. I felt it, for they were my clansmen and I knew them better than I knew myself. I did not understand it then, but I understood it later. What could Begter value so high? Was it the daughter of Tenrik Khan? No. It was the title she carried: ilkhan. And why did the Ikessal value the title of ilkhan so dearly? Well, it was widely known that only a Tenrik could be Khan of our kingdom and expect it still to comprise of twelve tribes.

But at fourteen, that is not what I thought. What I thought was that the Ikessal were staring at me now. I thought that Yeshin would not look at me and that my hair was too short and that I had made a fool of him and his bridegift. I wanted nothing more than to be out of my father’s hall. I stood and so did Tor and Gansukh. When we were out of the hall, Gansukh laughed at Yeshin’s gift for I would not be able to wear it for many, many months, and then only if I did not lose another bout in the ring which we all knew to be unlikely. We did not think on what omens this meant for my marriage and it sat forgotten in my sleeve for the rest of the night.


	3. Chapter 3

I should have known where this whole marriage was headed after that hairpin. If I had any foresight at all, I would have called off the betrothal then. But as my master had once said, I had an eagle’s sight when it came to battle and not much else. All in all, I should have thought on that hairpin more. If I did, I would have understood Yeshin better. And perhaps if I had understood Yeshin better, if I had been a kinder wife, softer and warmer, then he would not have left.

But he did. 

We had last spoken the night before Sutir’s second-nameday. The last thing Yeshin ever said to me was a question. He asked what I had decided to name our son. He would have known at the ceremony, but I think he wished to know before everyone else for the boy was his son too and I understood well his feelings, for I liked to think that I shared them. He was our son, but also heir to two lines. He was ilkhan by birth and would be the next Tenrik Khan. In the morning, he would be everyone’s ilkhan. Tonight, he was still just our son. Yeshin could not claim the boy for the Ikessal. He was my son first and foremost, and he would always be Tenrik. 

Six months prior, when the shamans came to cast my boy’s stars, Yeshin had taken them aside and made his demands known. I know it is the Ikessal tradition that the naming of children is the right of mothers only. It is not so in my tribe, doubly not so in the case of the royal line – a shaman chose my name, and my father only knew it then at my naming. Yeshin had argued that, since ours was a union of two lines, we ought to have split the names half and half. Our son would be a Tenrik, and his first name was to be given in the Ikessal manner. I did not know how he won them over, but he did. After, he had whispered it into my ear with all the satisfaction of a sated cat: that my son’s name would be mine to give. For months and months afterwards, the shamans and lords whispered that this asserting of his Ikessal traditions was a show of power.

It might have been, but I knew too, in his unspoken way, that this was Yeshin’s kindness to me. I had not thought it would be so hard to watch my child grow from his swaddling clothes and think that I would lose him to the people so early. It is unwise and unlucky for children to be named before their second nameday. The grasslands are grand and wide, but also harsh and cruel. Children die often. It is easier when they have not been named. Names have a power to them that entwines the heart and captures the memory. Still, I had held my son’s name in my heart for over half a year. I had already started calling him by it when it was just the two of us against all the sayings of the shamans. Each time I said his name, I felt my heart fill with warmth, for in those moments he was only my son. Just a babe in my arms. That is what Yeshin gave to me. My son, in his entirety, to love as a mother and not as a Khan. 

So, when Yeshin asked what I wished to name our son, I did not tell him to wait. I did not tell him to hear it said the next day when it was officially given. I told him freely. 

I do not remember what I expected him to feel. Happiness? Pride? I do not know what expression I expected him to have. It certainly was not a scowl. But when he heard the name, Yeshin scowled and he gave me a long, dark look, and then he walked away.

I did not think to stop him. 

I did not think he was leaving. 

I did not realize it until the next morning when he did not show up. We were all gathered in the central hall and in front of the other ten lords and various clan heads and the shaman of the Tenrik and the priest of the Ikessal, my husband did not appear. The bright bowl of fire burned bitterly, and I think I knew then in my heart of hearts that Yeshin had left.

In the moments that passed, I felt the tenuous peace that our marriage had forged crumble to dust. Half the lords wanted to murder my husband for the dishonor and insult he’d shown. The other half thought I had chased him away. That I meant to remind all the world that Sutir was my son, a Tenrik to the bone, no matter who had fathered him. Without Yeshin at my side, the hall descended into another debate such that had followed in the wake of my brother’s death. I could almost see the blades that would soon follow. 

Gansukh stood beside me and I could see his fist tighten with every insult thrown my way. I waited. I waited for longer than I should have. As Khan I should have been as decisive as my father, as steady as my brother. But I waited. I did not think Yeshin would come back, but still I waited. I waited until Olkhyn ran to my side and whispered in my ear where Yeshin had gone.

Khongirad.

I did not look behind me to see the Khongirad lord smile smug as a snake. I do not think I needed to. Yeshin could not have left the Stone City alone and unknown. I did not need to be told that all ten lords were watching me for weakness, waiting for me to crumble like a wronged wife and prove that I was no more than a girl. But they should have known better. I was Yeshin’s wife, but I was also Tenrik Khan and that was not a title that could be taken. I would be Tenrik Khan until the day I died as my brother before me, as my father before him, as all my forefathers before him.

If I could see Yeshin again, I would tell him this: I waited. I waited as long as I could. As his wife I would have waited longer, years, if that is what it took him to return. I would have held Sutir’s name solely in my heart and left it unspoken until he returned. But as Khan, I waited as long as I could. I waited longer than I should have.

“Give me my son,” I demanded. And when the Ikessal priest would not hand him over, I took him from his arms.

As my father had done for me, I passed my son through both fire and water. As I had no mother to take half the burden, so my son had no father to do the same. But my mother had passed into death two years before my naming. What excuse did Yeshin have?

I said his name.

Yeshin was not there to repeat it, so I said it again.

I let the shaman touch the sacred surka against his brow. I let the Ikessal priest say his hollow words. I held my son water-blessed and fire-blessed up in the sun before the lords and I presented him as their ilkhan. They all bowed and made the greetings for their ilkhan. And this time, I did see Jhungir’s face, and his eyes were dancing. His eyes said I had won the day and only the day. I wondered if Yeshin was in the Khongirad lands. I wondered if at this very moment he was lying in a heap of Khongirad pillows, shielded from the sun by Khongirad silks, and surrounded by pale-jade Khongirad eyes. 

There were no blades drawn at my son’s naming. The peace had held for one day longer. But as the lords and clan-heads left and returned to their bloodlines, I knew that our peace was fragile again. 

That night, I thought of the hairpin Yeshin had given me all those years ago. Milk-white jade of a sort rarely seen and carved like an unfurling dragon. He had not known me at all then, only that I was a daughter of the Khan, only that I was second-ilkhan, but still he brought it as a bridegift. Beautiful enough to have pleased any girl, and with a dragon fierce enough to honor any warrior. But try as I might I could not find it. Like Yeshin, it had vanished.

Instead, I held my son close to my breast and I tried to memorize the milk-soft smell of him. I promised him that I would not leave him a land torn by war. I promised that I would hold the twelve clans together, that I would break their pride and bury their ambition if that is what it took. Even without Yeshin, I was still Tenrik Khan. I was still the grand and gracious sky that embraced our grasslands. 

I did not promise that Yeshin would come back. I did not dare promise that, even then.


End file.
